Last Tuesday afternoon, 10 days before the opening of “Seussical: The Musical,” Portia Ezell was hard at work directing the three girls on stage to bring out their inner primates.

“Think big, think bad. Think hard-core monkeys,” Ezell instructed in a somewhat serious tone, which comically clashed with the absurdity of the command.

She was directing Maya Bridges, Christie Wilson and Danielle Wilson, who are playing a group of monkeys known as the Wickersham Brothers in the show. The three girls who were polishing their scenes that afternoon were only a small part of the 42-member cast, which has been rehearsing since the middle of April.

Although the plot of the musical is similar to that of the Dr. Seuss book “Horton Hears a Who,” the show also features characters from more than 10 other Seuss books.

"Seussical" was written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who also wrote the music for the multiple Tony award-winning 1998 Broadway musical “Ragtime.” Seussical’s initial Broadway run didn’t last very long, but it has since become quite successful in many regional and children’s theaters across the country, according to wikipedia.org.